Exclusion Of Muslim Minorities from The Indian Discourse on Reservation: A Critical Study

Abstract

Religious identities in India were always fragmented. However, they were probably exacerbated the most during Partition of 1947 which brought untold horrors upon the communal landscape of India. Heterogeneity and difference had never been so violent. The nations’ leaders scampering in a bid to remove any weed of religious communalism changed the discourse of the Constitutional Assembly from one of acknowledgement to ignorance to downright denial of any form of affirmative action towards religious minorities. Conformity had to be with the grand vision of nationalism which would unite India. Hence constitutionally sanctioned reservation measures acknowledging religious differences had to be obliterated. Then did India succeed? Or in its vision of creating unity, did it fail to acknowledge equality miserably? This article examines how even after seventy years of independence, the Indian experiment failed its promises of equality towards the most predominant religious minority at the time of Partition, the Muslims.